The future is here people, and it is sweet — or at least minty fresh.
The Hershey Co. has announced that they’re going to make Ice Breakers mints available with the Amazon Dash Button!
Basically, this means that people who love Ice Breakers can now get a random button from Amazon that they keep somewhere in their house. Then anytime they run out of said Ice Breakers all they have to do is push the button, and voilà!Amazon sends them another order of mints!
Not to be outdone, Wrigley, which is owned by Mars, is also offering Orbit Gum Amazon Dash Buttons. You know, in case you’d prefer gum over mints.
As with most things these days, it’s geared toward those elusive “millennials” — or, in other words, me.
"Ice Breakers is excited to team up with Amazon to provide our millennial fans this new in-home, e-commerce experience," explains Bill Blubaugh, senior director, sweets and refreshments, The Hershey Co.
And, Ice Breakers do particularly well among millennials online — the top consumer segment to visit Ice Breakers pages and purchase the product are people between 21-24 years old.
Hershey also had other reasons for choosing Ice Breakers — instead of another Hershey product, like say, chocolate bars. Apparently the mints are Hershey's second best-selling brand through Amazon.
And, Ice Breakers sales on Amazon.com are also up 70 percent year over year, growing twice as fast as the U.S. candy, mint and gum category. While the repeat order rate is 31 percent — more than double the average of other Hershey brands on Amazon.com.
Plus, you know, it’s hard to ship chocolate anywhere hot.
I have to confess, my first reaction to all this, even as a “certified official millennial,” is, What? Who in the world is so addicted toIce Breakers that they need what’s basically an Life Alert Emergency re-order button in their house?
And where do you even put a button like that? It’s not like people are always going to run out of mints in one specific place. Or are they? Am I eating mints wrong?
But then, another part of me has been lured in by how cool the whole thing sounds, and what it could mean for the future.
Two years from now, will little Amazon Dash Buttons cover every refrigerator in America? Are grocery stores going to go the way of Blockbuster Video? Will we all just order our impulse M&M’s with a quick tap, and then wait for a drone to bring it to our doorstep? Because I could totally be on board with that.
I have to give Hershey and Wrigley credit for getting in on this whole phenomenon early, and for bringing candy to the movement. I think when most people picture Amazon Dash, or any type of automatic re-ordering, they think of laundry detergent, toilet paper and diapers.
But candy may be even more important. It’s something most people associate with an impulse purchase as they wait for a cashier to ring them up, not an item they put on their weekly grocery list. So figuring out a way to sell it online is vital to the industry and retailers.
And in case you thought internet shopping was just a fad that candy makers could ignore, Denise Vivas, director of e-commerce, The Hershey Co., says they “expect online grocery sales to surpass $80 billion by 2020.”
Also, according to Nielsen, more than half of global consumers are willing to buy groceries online, and one-quarter are already doing so. Specifically, millennials are most likely to be shopping online today and to use future e-commerce options due to a high comfort level with technology. Most are early in their careers and establishing households, making them an important demographic to reach with innovative e-commerce solutions.
So basically, the future is already here, and we all just need to get adapt accordingly.
Also, Mars, any idea when you might launch a Snicker’s Bites Dash button? Because that would truly be sweet.
